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Time for Arnold to Confront Immigration Question

Ever since taking office in 2003 — when he promptly struck down a short-lived law allowing illegal immigrants to obtain California driver’s licenses — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been coy on the license issue. Trying to appease restrictionists among the GOP base while not alienating Latino voters, he has refused to oppose the licenses in principle. Instead, he’s clung to a technicality, saying he’s got nothing against licensing illegal immigrants per se, it’s just that Washington has yet to establish standards for doing so under the Real ID Act. By claiming that his hands were tied, he’s been able to continue opposing such legislation — appeasing the restrictionists — while leaving open enough hope to mollify pro-immigration groups.

But that excuse appears to have run its course.

In New York, which is moving ahead with controversial plans to start issuing licenses to illegal immigrants, the state has struck a deal with the feds to make the documents Real ID-compliant.

And if New York can do it, so can California. Which means that, sooner or later, Arnold is going to have to take a stand on the issue one way or the other — something he has tried desperately to avoid doing so far.

But there may be a way out of this. Under them terms of the New York deal, illegal immigrants would get a different sort of license than everyone else, one that couldn’t be used for federal ID — and thus, couldn’t be used to board an airplane. That leads some to conclude that there’s no way illegal immigrants will seek out the license. After all, to do so would be to officially tag oneself as being here illegally.

They might change their minds, though, if the state — as part of agreeing to issue licenses to illegal immigrants — significantly increased punishment for driving without a license. If jail time, steep fees, car seizure and/or deportation were the consequences of driving while unlicensed, it’s likely many illegal immigrants would accept the license — even though it meant owning up to illegal status — as the lesser of two evils.

A political solution for Schwarzenegger, then, could be to agree to the licenses, but only if the legislation included stiffer penalties for unlicensed driving. Immigration proponents would, theoretically, be pleased to finally get licenses for illegal immigrants, while restrictionists could be satisfied that, if nothing else, more law-breakers might be deported as a consequence.

It may be wishful thinking to imagine that all sides would agree to this, seeing that they’re generally determined not to agree on anything, but it seems like the only workable answer. And with New York blowing a hole in his old strategy, Schwarzenegger is going to need to come up with some way to handle this explosive issue.